''German history does not simply belong to the Germans,'' writes Richard J. Evans, professor of history at the University of London. ''The rest of the world has an intense and legitimate interest in German attitudes to the recent past and Germans' feelings about their national identity and purpose.''

Although ''In Hitler's Shadow'' was written before the Berlin wall began to crumble, it has particular meaning now. Under Soviet domination and its own rigid regime, East Germany never acknowledged the extent of the Holocaust to the same degree as the West German Government. East German authors and historians could not write freely; some had their works published, often at personal risk, on the Western side of the wall. It will be interesting to see what the East German historians, unfettered, will write about the Third Reich's atrocities and their Government's responsibility to the victims of the concentration camps.

Professor Evans offers surprising evidence in his well-documented study about the effort of some West Germans to escape the Nazi past. He reveals how a small but influential group of conservative historians, writing for their countrymen in the 1980's, have justified the criminality that the rest of the world thought was proved at the Nuremberg trials. These historians have attempted to exculpate the German Army and the many thousands of German civilians who were willing participants in the Third Reich's crimes.

Commenting about West Germany since World War II, Professor Evans writes: ''The 'economic miracle' gave the West German economy an enviable stability and strength. Yet this was achieved not least on the basis of trying to forget about the past. Very little was said about Nazism. Next to nothing was taught about it in the schools. The Nazi affiliations of major figures in the economy were never mentioned. Even in politics, there was no great stigma attached to a Nazi background, so long as this did not become the embarrassing object of public debate.''

He identifies some of the leading West German historians whose books or lectures have tried to detach the German volk from the deeds of the Third Reich: Hellmut Diwald, author of ''History of the Germans''; Ernst Nolte, author of ''Three Faces of Fascism''; Michael Sturmer, professor of history at Erlangen University; Andreas Hillgruber, professor of history at Cologne University, and Joachim Fest, a Hitler biographer and an editor at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Citing their works and words, Professor Evans points out that these historians contend that the murder of millions of Jews in Auschwitz was not unique. They say a comparable act of genocide took place in 1915 when the Turks killed a million and a half Armenians. Why did the Nazis commit a similar act? Because, Ernst Nolte contends, they had to counteract the Russians. The Germans believed they would become Stalin's next victims and the Nazis needed an ideology to defend the German bourgeoisie against the Communist threat. Anti-Semitism provided such a counterideology. Thus Hitler's acts, as Nolte puts it, were ''understandable, and up to a certain point, indeed, justified.''

As further justification for Hitlerism and the Holocaust, these historians draw a parallel to the role of the United States in Vietnam and that of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Professor Evans responds that it requires ''a considerable degree of myopia'' to compare Vietnam and Afghanistan to the premeditated and highly organized murders of millions of men, women and children in Auschwitz and the other concentration camps.

''In Hitler's Shadow'' concludes that the survival of West German democracy and its continued stability in European and world politics now require ''a continuing, open and honest confrontation with the Nazi past.'' In light of current developments, a reader is left with the thought that the same need for historical truth applies to East Germany.

Fortunately, enough potential victims intended for the German gas chambers survived to tell their stories - and dispute the revisionist historians. Primo Levi, the late Italian novelist, told me he refused to have the Auschwitz number on his arm removed so that young people would ask him what the tattoo signified. Several recently published memoirs also bear witness, including Jiri Weil's ''Life With a Star'' (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), an account of a Jew in Nazi-occupied Prague, and Yehuda Nir's ''Lost Childhood'' (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), the story of a few members of a Polish family from Lvov who survived with forged baptismal certificates.

Among the most remarkable memoirs is ''Double Indemnity,'' by Zofia S. Kubar, who fled the Warsaw ghetto and assumed a new identity. She constantly had to reassure herself that she could pass for a Pole, banking on her brown eyes and dark blond hair. She writes: ''Flaxen hair and blue eyes would have been better. What bothered me most was my nose, not especially long, but not the small, upturned Polish kind. Would the shape of my nose determine my future?''

After a series of narrow escapes and encountering the anti-Semitism of many Poles, the author was hidden by an old school friend named Danka, one of the righteous gentiles who saved her. The two young women from different backgrounds broke down the walls of prejudice that at first existed between them. ''Double Identity'' becomes more than a story of survival; it is about courage and friendship and freedom even in the shadow of death.

Photo of Zofia S. Kubar

Correction: December 30, 1989, Saturday, Late Edition - Final A book review on Dec. 9 about a memoir by Zofia S. Kubar, a Holocaust survivor, misstated the title. The book, published by Hill & Wang, is ''Double Identity,'' not ''Double Indemnity.''